At a fraction of the cost of other full-color 3D printing alternatives, the clip serves as a teaser to what is possible with material know how and a lot of ingenuity.

Winners of the 3D Pioneers Challenge announced

The second edition of 3D printing design competition 3DPC has celebrated the work of seven designers from across the globe.

In addition to getting their designs noticed by industry partners including Stratasys and Autodesk, each of the winners received a share of €15,000 ($17,800) and exclusive prizes from MakerBot and designreport.

Winning entries include a metal 3D printed skateboard truck by Philipp Manger, and the Palmyra Rebuilt project from Eric Geboers and Matteo Baldassari.

The Joint Mitnor cave in Devon, England, is set to reopen August 12 2017.

Ransacked by thieves in 2015, the site has been refurbished with 3D printed replicas of the fossils it used to contain. The models were created using CT scanning techniques and gypsum casting, so they look and feel faithful to the original remains.

3D printed fossil replicas in Joint Mitnor. Photo by Charlie Bird

3Diligent releases Complete Guide to Metal 3D Printing

Digital manufacturing service 3Diligent has released a 13 page report detailing leading metal additive manufacturing technologies.

Featuring the likes of Boeing and GE the document provides 3Diligent’s perceived overview of the “State of Professional and Industrial 3D Printing”.

ARMI liquid silicone 3D printing used to model cancer cells

In an interview with Fox News, associate professor Thomas Angelini has revealed new developments in 3D printing research at the University of Florida.

When it comes to 3D printing on FDM based 3D printers, there are an increasing amount of materials and colors to choose from. One man, named Ekaggrat Singh Kalsi, however, decided to try something entirely out of the ordinary; print with light.

As many of us know, 3D printers use a technique where they print layer-by-layer until a design is complete. The objects come off the printer as whole 3-dimensional items. Ekarggrat decided to implement an entirely new concept within the print process. He wonder what would happen if instead of using traditional filament, he used LED lights, thus he set out on a mission to find out.

Of course, tangible objects couldn’t be printed in lights, as we all know that light is intangible. However, utilizing a camera, Ekaggrat was able to visuallize a complete 3D printed object, built entirely out of light.

“What I did was attach a LED to the print head of a 3dr delta printer,” Ekaggrat told 3DPrint.com. “The LED is attached to pin 1 on the Ramps board of the printer. I wrote a custom script in grasshopper 3d. This script takes any 3D model, and converts it into a gcode which is specially meant to control the printer with the LED. This gcode just makes the printer move on a path and turns on and turns off a led without actually printing anything.”

He then took his NIKON D3100 camera, set it to BULB mode, and took a photograph using a very long exposure value. This was while the 3D printer moved using the LED light on the path he defined in the gcode. The extruder on the printer was turned off, so that it didn’t actually print with traditional filament.

“This is a twist to an age old technique called ‘light painting’,” Ekaggrat explained to us.

The results? They were quite incredible. You can see each layer that the 3D printer moved around, shining its LED light as it went layer-by-layer until the print was complete. Of course, there is no end product other than these fascinating photos that were taken.

The entire project took Ekaggrat only two days to complete, and he isn’t stopping here. He plans on implementing a RGB LED to add color to his modern day ‘light painting’ technique.

What do you think? Is this not one of the most amazing looking 3D prints you have ever seen? Discuss in the 3D Light Printing thread on 3DPB.com. Check out the video showing the process which Ekaggrat used, below: